The 10 Weirdest Inaugurations in US History

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President Barack Obama will put his hand on a Bible for the 57th
inauguration ceremony Monday (Jan. 21) and kick off his next four
years in office. And while everything may come off without a
hitch, inaugurations haven't always gone smoothly. From Richard
Nixon's parade of dead birds to Calvin Coolidge's impromptu
inauguration, here are some of the most bizarre swearing-in days
in U.S. history.

Drunken oratory

In 1865, Andrew Johnson gave a train-wreck of a speech on the big
day. The vice president usually gives a short and smooth speech
prior to the president's address. But the 16th vice president,
who later became the 17th president after
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated that year, was ill with
typhoid fever and took the medicine of the day, whiskey, the
night before. The hangover must have gone to his head: During the
speech, he bragged about his humble origins and his triumph over
Confederate rebels. Lincoln reportedly looked on in horror, while
the former vice president Hannibal Hamlin tugged at his coattails
in a failed bid to get him to stop.

Dead birds

Ulysses S. Grant thought that canaries would add a festive touch
to his inaugural ball in 1873, the beginning of his second term.
Unfortunately, the 18th president failed to anticipate the cold
temperatures — the morning low was 4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 15
degrees Celsius), the coldest March day on record. With wind
chill, the day felt like a blustery minus 15 F to minus 30 F
(minus 26 C to minus 34 C). All told, about 100 birds froze to
death during Grant's inauguration. [ The
World's Weirdest Weather ]

More dead birds

Birds don't seem to do well on Inauguration Day. During Richard
Nixon's Inauguration Day parade in 1973, he wanted to make sure
pigeons didn't ruin his big day. The 37th president had a
chemical bird repellant sprayed all along the inaugural parade
route. The streets were strewn with dozens of dead pigeons.

Grant's inaugurations suffered from several blunders. Not only
did he inadvertently lead to mass bird death at the second
inauguration, his first inauguration in 1869 saw outright brawls.
The people staffing the coat-check area couldn't read the claim
tickets, so as people waited ever longer to pick up their
outerwear, fights broke out and some guests abandoned their
jackets and hats. "Illiterate workers mixed up everyone's coat
claims, leading to fights among the men and tears among the
women," writes Jim Bendat in "Democracy's Big Day: The
Inauguration of our President 1789-2009" (iUniverse Star, 2008).

Quiet ceremony

Calvin Coolidge, known as "Silent Cal," was notorious for talking
little and doing things with no fanfare. That includes the start
of his presidency. He was staying with his father in rural
Vermont when news came that President Warren G. Harding had died.
Because the 30th president's father happened to be a justice of
the peace, his father performed the swearing in right there,
without an audience.

Killer speech

William Henry Harrison's inauguration
speech was deadly dull. The ninth president of the United
States stood so long in the cold, rainy weather to give his
inauguration speech that he caught a chill, got pneumonia and
died just a month later. But not everyone thinks the speech
killed him; he may have gotten his cold three weeks later,
meaning his rainy day performance wasn't to blame for his demise.
[ The
Strangest Elections in US History ]

House party from hell

After Andrew Jackson's inauguration in 1829, the seventh
president threw an epic party at the
White House straight out of an '80s movie. Jackson was
notorious for his frontier-style, "man of the people" mystique
and he attracted a similarly rough crowd. The louts crashed the
party, sloshed through the house in muddy shoes, broke china and
ripped the curtains down. To get them to leave, the staff used a
time-tested trick: Leaving a
tub of whiskey on the front lawn.

Debating a little girl

In 1929, when President Herbert Hoover was sworn in, the chief
justice who administered the oath, William Howard Taft, garbled
it, substituting the word "maintain" for "protect." An
eighth-grade girl named Helen Terwilliger caught the flub, and
sent Taft a note. Instead of admitting the error, Taft wrote a
letter insisting he got the words right, and movie buffs
eventually played their newsreels to determine who was right. The
eighth-grader held the day and Taft eventually conceded he was
wrong.

Running for office

President James Buchanan had an extreme case of diarrhea on
his Inauguration Day in 1857. Prior to the inauguration, the 15th
president of the United States had contracted a case of "National
Hotel Disease," by staying at a shady establishment. The stubborn
case of dysentery lingered past his inauguration, and Buchanan
needed a doctor nearby during the ceremony.

While partying has always been a major part of the inaugural
tradition, guests were considerably rowdier in years past. During
James Madison's inaugural ball in 1809, the weather got so hot
that patrons reportedly broke out the windows at Long's Hotel so
they could breathe. (Tickets for the ball apparently cost $4
each.)